Security is conventionally maintained in organizations by segregating physical networks used by each group of users. This acts to restrict access to data available on computers and databases used in such networks. For example, the physical segregation prevents a user in engineering from gaining access to data in the payroll department's network and vice versa. While separate local network infrastructures help to maintain security of data, superfluous equipment and maintenance is required to maintain these segregated networks. This increases expenses and complexity to the data infrastructures of organizations.
Regardless of the organizational structure of networks used in commercial, governmental, and other settings, there is an ever increasing security concern that sensitive data transmitted or stored on local networks will be accessed by an unauthorized individual or accidentally accessed or disclosed outside of a group of users, which would compromise the security of the data. Whether a security threat is intentional or unintentional, transmitting data exclusively in one security level partitioned network or another does not protect the data if it is in plaintext format. This is because even strict physical segregation of a network by security level is no guarantee that data will not be disseminated to end-users outside that security level.